Interview: George Lynch - Kill All Control

Furious George has again been unleashed with his new solo album Kill All Control. What started as the follow up to the Souls Of We project Let The Truth Be Known turned into something quite different. Bad luck, tough breaks, and intestinal fortitude gave birth to a stellar record. With a solid rhythm section, inspired songs, and wicked guitar work, Kill All Control is a must-have for hardcore George Lynch fans.

Lynch has shown no signs of slowing down over the years. Kill All Control is his eleventh solo album and closely follows Smoke And Mirrors, Lynch Mob’s last release. Lynch continues to tour, record, teach guitar clinics, and somehow find the time to build Mr. Scary Guitars, his own line of instruments. PG recently caught up with Lynch to pick his brain about the new record, gear, his guitar company, and the son of “Mr. Scary.”

How did Kill All Control come about?

It was originally going to be the second Souls Of We record and it took us two years to make. The ironic thing is that we were going to do the record in four or five weeks with London LeGrand [vocalist for Brides Of Destruction], Nic Speck [bassist for Run, Run, Run], and Adrian Ost [drummer for Powerman 5000]. We thought we’d capture a moment, and knock it out of the park.

We had a deal set up with Slate Studios. We had the rehearsal room, got in there, worked ten days straight, and wrote the instrumentals for the whole record in that time. We then got into the studio and tracked all the music in two weeks. We’re three and a half weeks into it and figured we’d knock the vocals out in a week—still within the time frame allotted for the budget. But things just went sideways for another two years after that.

What happened to tracking the vocals?

I love singers, but they’re like women—it’s a very complicated thing. You can’t live with them, you can’t live without them. If somebody could figure out singers, they could probably figure out the problems of the world.

The record really should have been called Happy Accident because I basically lost the record. I was out of money, we had exceeded our budget, and we were way beyond the time we had allotted for it. I had no album and I had no singer, so I had to go on and do other things. London did his best, but personal things were happening in his life and it just didn’t work out. I love him, he’s a very good friend, and I felt bad for him, but it just wasn’t working out at that moment in time.

So we hooked up with Will Martin [vocalist for Earshot], an extended laborious process, but what he did was unbelievably beautiful. He did a great job, but he got busy with Earshot. Then we got Keith St. John from Montrose to come in. He’s a very good friend, very hard worker, a saint, a sweet guy, and very easy to work with. He was right there for me when I said, “Dude, I got another song! My singer went away. Do you have any ideas?” He filled in the gaps for me, and he was really a saint to come in at the eleventh hour and just bust his ass.

Marc Torien [vocalist for Bullet Boys] did a few fill-in dates for Oni Logan when he couldn’t go to Canada with us. He did some Lynch Mob dates and some California dates as well, so I thought maybe he could help out. He came in and did a great job on a couple songs that weren’t finished, but he had his commitments with Bullet Boys, so he went away as well.

Then London came back in at the very end. He had gotten everything together in his life and expressed it in the song “Wicked Witch,” which is the single [listen to the stream above]. It came out amazing! It was actually something that he and I had been working on for about a week at his place, before he fell out of the band. He remembered it, found the tapes, brought all that back, and still improved on it. When he went in and tracked it, I literally cried when I heard it. It was just so beautiful, so unexpected. So, he came back, which was kind of a full circle story with a happy ending.

What we ended up doing with some of the singers was comping them together. We took a verse of Marc’s, a chorus of Keith’s, and it all worked out. It did require some work, but we made it work.

Are you happy with the way it turned out?

We were obviously forced to do certain things. Ideally, we could have made vast improvements on some of the material, but we captured a moment. Eighty percent of the record I’m very happy with.

Stay Connected

Sign up for our email newsletters!

Get the PG Apps

On PremierGuitar.com, "Sponsored Content" refers to articles, videos, or audio recordings that are produced or curated by an advertiser but that Premier Guitar is happy to share alongside our own editorial content due to the Sponsored Content’s educational, musical, or entertainment value. Sponsored Content is clearly labeled everywhere it appears, and Premier Guitar's editorial department has no involvement in its creation.